A recent post by kamelia, entitled "Our Nuclear Future" (link here: https://uofcmediastudies.wixsite.com/dmt2018/blog/our-nuclear-future), brings up many points for further investigation—especially given our conversations around situated knowledges and projects of collective worlding, as well as the efficacy of critical making.
As is succinctly pointed out: “We are essentially using a technology with effects that last far beyond our conceptions of the future, to a point where we can't even imagine an Earth (When is global warming going to make this planet inhabitable? Will our nuclear waste outlive us?). The question of what to do with nuclear waste is something that challenges our concepts of the future. How do we expect a future and who gets to imagine it?”
To add to the conversation, I want to point out one particular question that continues to be a focal point for many speculative designers: “How do we communicate to future generations about the dangers of nuclear waste?”In other words, How do we send a message 10,000 years into the future?
The New Hampshire Institute of Art's Type 1 class and Bricobio came up with “The Raycat Solution,” which sets out to engineer cats that change color in response to radiation (hence the name “ray cats”), and then to create a culture/legend/oral tradition that can be passed along, with the message that if your cat changes color, you should move elsewhere.
The project inspired a song called Don't Change Color, Kitty by EmperorX.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g78hZIEqONM
Lyrics:
Don't change color, kitty.
Keep your color, kitty.
Stay that pretty gray.
Don't change color, kitty.
Keep your color, kitty.
Keep sickness away.
Don't change color, kitty.
Keep your color, kitty.
Please, 'cause if you do,
or glow your luminescent eyes
we're all gonna have to move.
The idea that we should be inserting “raycats" into the cultural vocabulary highlights the absurdity of nuclear energy. Other speculative design projects around this question have produced similarly absurd results such as the creation of a massive field of spikes above geological repositories (as if humans have never ventured into dangerous terrain?), and the creation of an ‘atomic priesthood.’
Artist concept of giant spikes placed over the WIPP site. Image: 'Expert Judgement on Markers to Deter Inadvertent Human Intrusion into the Waste Isolation Plant'/US Department of Energy
But perhaps the greatest part of these speculative design projects are their outlandishness. Although some people read The Raycat Solution seriously, I think it satirizes the discourse around nuclear energy storage, by hyperbolizing an entirely untenable idea. (Clearly the best idea is not to create any more waste and to decommission existing nuclear reactors). I am left wondering where humor fits into these projects, however, and what the aesthetic challenges are with thinking of nuclear futures.
India